NOSFERATU PRODUCTION
BACK TO THE 19TH CENTURY The crew rigged up an Arriflex ST camera to shoot the true-to-the- time scenes for Nosferatu
meaning that he wanted to represent the culture of 1838, not of 1922. “That’s what makes it its own film, inherently; 20th-century expressionism isn’t part of the equation. Artistically, it’s romantic and religious ideals that are in the relevant zeitgeist.” Blaschke opted to shoot the film with an Arriflex ST camera provided by Panavision. “We had flickering bulbs in The Lighthouse , then it got more sophisticated for The Northman but it was still mostly electric lighting. One of my ambitions was to return to using real flame and candlelight, like we did in The Witch , but on film this time. “The only way this was possible was to have a high-speed lens set, which was made at Panavision by Dan Sasaki. These lenses required the area behind the lens port to be as spacious as possible. The mirror clearance is a little better on an Arriflex than a Panaflex, so Dan could actually make the rear element of the high-speed lens a little bigger and closer to the film. It probably gained us only a third to a half of a stop, but I asked for as
ONE OF MY ambitions WAS TO RETURN TO USING real flame AND CANDLELIGHT”
much light from him as he could give me. I used T1 lenses and an incredible focus puller – everything at my disposal – to make it work.” Blaschke has also collaborated with production designer Craig Lathrop across all of Eggers’ films and was reunited with him again for this one. Lathrop previously constructed all of the turf buildings that made up Fjölnir’s farm in The Northman . For Nosferatu , the goal was to recreate 19th-century Germany. Doing so required most of the sets – and almost all interiors – to be created from scratch; about 60 builds in all. “You could go to the most
preserved city in Germany and you still won’t find a city block that’s completely pure,” explains Blaschke. “On a given block, something will have been torn down, amended, freshly painted or a ground floor turned into a Starbucks.” Additionally, despite Czech and Romanian castles being very well preserved, most of their interiors were too cramped to allow for creative camerawork, and walls were always freshly whitewashed, a mood killer for Eggers. “We scouted in Romania, and went to Transylvania, where we looked at Corvin Castle in Hunedoara,” Blaschke
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